IT IS A DOUBLE DELIGHT FOR BJP
BJP wins in Guj for sixth time; but tally down by 16 BJP wrests power from the Congress in Himachal
The BJP scored its sixth straight victory in Gujarat thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intensive and hard-fought campaign but the gritty fight put up by Congress president Rahul Gandhi showed the Opposition party in a new light, an important development with just about 18 months left for the general elections.
In Himachal Pradesh, the BJP swept to victory with 44 seats and the Congress bagged 21 in the 68-seat Assembly. The BJP and its allies now have governments in 19 states and the Congress, four.
Mr Modi, draped in a garland of flowers, told cheering supporters at the BJP headquarters here, “The Gujarat election results are historic. In this day and age, for a party to keep winning for so long is unprecedented.”
The BJP failed to crack the 100-mark in the 182-seat Assembly but its vote percentage has grown to 49.1 per cent from 47.85 in 2012. It won fewer seats, 99 against 115 in the previous election. The Congress too benefited from a vote surge, its share going up from 38.93 per cent to 41.4 per cent and saw its seats rise from 61 to 77. Mr Modi’s campaign almost single-handedly overcame everything that was said to work against the ruling party: the impact of demonetisation and GST on the trading community; the rainbow coalition stitched up by the Congress with the caste groups — Mr Hardik Patel of the Patidars, Mr Alpesh Thakor of the OBCs and Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani.
There were many positives for the Congress: The new party president, for long the butt of jokes, showed that he could put up a fight against the seemingly invincible Mr Modi.
I ASSURE that we will leave no stone unturned in furthering the development journey of Gujarat, Himachal and will serve the people tirelessly. NARENDRA MODI, Prime Minister THE VICTORY of the BJP in Himachal and Gujarat is a win of Modi’s development agenda against the politics of dynasty, casteism and appeasement. AMIT SHAH, BJP chief
Finally it was the rainbow coalition engineered by the Congress that included Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakore and Jignesh Mevani, which dented the saffron citadel.
That the Congress could not have managed to increase its tally otherwise is evident by the losses suffered by its local state leadership which includes heavyweights such as Arjun Modhwadia, Shaktisingh Gohil and Siddharth Patel.
Another take away from this election was the emergence of Hardik Patel as a leader to reckon with.
Sources have told this newspaper that the Congress organisation was in shambles when its central leadership landed in Gujarat four months ago to begin the campaign.
It was the organisational abilities of this trio that helped it fight the polls on an equal platform with the ruling BJP.
While Mr Mevani, who rose as a Dalit activist in the aftermath of the flogging of Dalits in Una, mobilised the votes of his community, he also made his foray into the Gujarat Assembly fighting as an independent candidate from Vadgam with Congress support.
Alpesh Thakore, another activist, who rose to fame with his campaign against illicit liquor in his Thakore community, joined the Congress just days before the poll and Congress sources say that influenced at least 80 seats, and forced the BJP to turn to another OBC community, the Kolis, to help them out. Mr Thakore contested from Radhanpur constituency and won.
Though his Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) failed to make an electoral impact as is evident from the BJP winning Mehsana and Surat, it was his mass mobilisation and impact on the youth that created the socalled wave against the incumbent party.
The BJP had to concentrate its energies on containing the Patel leader.